


Gwynfydedig

by Ladybug_21



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Pride (2014)
Genre: Aziraphale Needs to Adopt All of the Baby Gays in London, Guardian Angels, M/M, bookshops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-15 08:03:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21250106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: On the morning of the London Gay Pride Parade in 1984, Gethin reflects on just how unexpectedly blessed his life in London has been.





	Gwynfydedig

**Author's Note:**

> For [april_rainer (tom_bedlam)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tom_bedlam), who introduced me to both of these fandoms (to which I hold zero rights). And yes, I realise that I already wrote a kind of similar [crossover fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19724905) for _Good Omens_ and _Gentleman Jack_, but clearly my current mood is that Aziraphale needs to quietly and kindly adopt all of the sweet and adorable baby gays who wander into his bookshop.

Gethin loved the hush of Bloomsbury in the morning. There was something rare and precious about the stillness of the young day: the feeling that the neighbourhood was unfurling inch by inch; the birds chirruping intermittently in Tavistock Square; yawning workers slouching out of the Russell Square Tube station towards their jobs at cafés and shops, ready to be at their posts by the time the students and professionals arrived. In the summer, Gethin found it impossible to sleep past dawn, and so he made a habit of rolling out of bed (quietly, so as not to wake Jonathan where he sprawled snoring) and sitting by the window, watching and listening to London slowly coming to life.

The day of the parade was no different. Without rhyme or reason, Gethin's eyelashes fluttered open at half past seven, and he stretched catlike before slipping out from under the blankets and padding his way over to the kitchen for a cup of tea. _Life; London; this moment in June, _he mused, turning off the stove before the tea kettle whistled and woke Jonathan. Across the city, newspapers were thudding on the doorsteps of homes and establishments, all bearing the same bad news: Thatcher, pit closures, protests, riots at Orgreave. _Bloody government_, thought Gethin bitterly, as he took a sip of tea and silently cursed the arseholes from Customs and Excise who had raided the shop only two months prior.

Suddenly moody, Gethin wandered downstairs to muse amidst the familiar presence of his legions of silent advisors. Books had always been a source of solace for Gethin. Even when he was a child—even before he knew exactly how and why he was different—books provided the words that gave voice to his loneliness, the friends he wished he had had, the spaces in which he could feel his most genuine self without fear of judgement.

Books were what had saved him, when he had first fled Wales for London.

Gethin had never done anything nearly so terrifying as leaving home, but he simply _couldn't_ have survived another minute stifled in Rhyl. And so to London he came—penniless, directionless, utterly alone, astounded by the unfamiliar sights and sounds and by the masses and masses of people, people from everywhere, people doing everything. Maybe even people like him.

It had been overwhelming for Gethin. He had spent all of his remaining money on a sandwich, and then retreated into the first bookshop he saw, hiding from the chill of the streets. (It was December 1968 in a bitterly cold London. _Nadolig Llawen_ to no one.)

Who knew what might have become of him, if Gethin hadn't been awoken late that evening from an accidental nap behind a shelf, by the unusually sympathetic owner of the bookshop.

For Mr A.Z. Fell hadn't thrown Gethin out into the cold. Far from it; he had offered him a warm mug of cocoa and a couch on which to sleep, for what was probably meant to be one evening, but for what eventually became a solid two weeks. Gethin insisted on paying his stay by helping out around the shop—at least, insofar as he could. Everything in the bookshop was immaculately tidy already; a shockingly low number of books ever were actually sold; and, for some reason that Gethin was always too polite to pursue, the bookshop simply didn't _open_ on certain days. It was a curious set-up, but Gethin didn't question it, not when Mr Fell seemed to be doing just fine financially and was always ever so generous towards Gethin.

For one thing, Mr Fell introduced Gethin to a variety of foods that had never crossed Gethin's path in his life in North Wales: endless delicious types of rich cheese and flaky crackers; fine, aromatic teas imported from across the globe; mouthwatering French desserts dusted with cocoa powder or confectioners' sugar; savoury tikka masala and paneer and balti. It was all impossibly new to Gethin, and he sampled it all, wide-eyed and marveling at what he had been missing.

But even the scrumptious food didn't nourish Gethin nearly as much as the _books_ that Mr Fell offered.

Mr Fell always seemed slightly put-out whenever someone insisted on buying a book from him, but he avidly encouraged Gethin to read anything and everything on the bookshelves ("Just take care you don't drip anything on the pages, please"). And read anything and everything, Gethin did. At first, he only stuck to the safety of the classics, of the works that in fourth form had hinted to him that he might not be as alone in the world as he thought: _The Iliad_, _Twelfth Night_, _As You Like It_. But Mr Fell slowly began to leave more modern recommendations on the table next to Gethin's makeshift bed: Wilde, Lawrence, Woolf, Baldwin. Gethin would never forget the evening that he discovered an unpublished manuscript waiting on the table, and stayed up all night reading and then re-reading _Maurice_. It had never occurred to him before that a story in which two men loved each other could end _happily_. He spent the next day in an exhausted, relieved daze, unable to wipe the smile from his face, and equally unable to tell Mr Fell how much Forster's ending had meant to him (although he sensed that Mr Fell understood, regardless).

It all seemed like a wonderful, impossible coincidence, that Mr Fell should intuit Gethin's literary preferences so readily. At least, it seemed that way until Gethin met Crowley.

Crowley, preceded by Mr Fell's preemptive apologies, sauntered over to the bookshop for New Year's Eve. Initially, Gethin couldn't see how the prim and proper Mr Fell could have even become acquainted with this squirmy, grumbling man, who seemed to be doing his best sartorial impersonation of John Lennon. But upon arrival, Crowley immediately made himself at home in the bookshop in a manner that indicated that he was there quite often when Gethin wasn't sleeping on Mr Fell's couch. Gethin didn't know why it had never occurred to him that there might be a _reason_ that Mr Fell had so much literature pertinent to Gethin's interests on hand, until he saw the easy familiarity with which Mr Fell interacted with Crowley, who for his part barely took his bespectacled eyes off of the fussy shopkeeper the whole evening long.

Crowley brought wine and champagne. He also brought veiled gossip about some suspect-sounding mutual acquaintances named Beelz and Dagon, which he unsuccessfully offered to swap for Mr Fell's best Christmas stories about other mutual acquaintances named Gabriel and Michael. And at one point, when Mr Fell was off fetching some cake for the three of them, Crowley glanced sideways through his tinted circular spectacles and noticed the teetering stack of books on the table next to the couch.

"That's quite a collection," he said to Gethin. "Yours?"

"Recommendations from Mr Fell," Gethin explained sheepishly.

"Good ones, I hope?"

"Yes," said Gethin, nodding emphatically. "I never would have found any of them on my own. I've never read anything like them before. I..." Gethin hesitated, then mustered his courage and pressed on: "I never knew how much I _needed_ to read anything like them before."

"Hmm." Crowley picked one book up, flipped it over, set it back down. "He's very good at knowing what a person needs from a book, he is. Can read it off of a person's face—well, most people, that is."

"He's been so kind to me," said Gethin softly. "I don't know how to thank him for all that he's done."

"Eh, don't worry about it, it's in his nature." Crowley's mouth quirked into a smile. "Think of him as your very own guardian angel, he'd like that. And as for how to thank him? I'd say just pay it all forward. Help others the way that he's helped you, see?"

Crowley gestured towards the stack of books, then grinned as Mr Fell returned with the cake. Gethin sat quietly with his thoughts, turning over what Crowley had said. "Happy New Year!" Crowley shouted raucously when midnight struck, and he threw an unsteady arm around a tolerant Mr Fell, who smiled at Gethin with a quiet "_Blwyddyn Newydd Dda_, my dear fellow." By the time he was done wishing his host a happy new year in return, Gethin had decided exactly how he wanted to thank Mr Fell for all his help.

Outside, London was no longer merely stirring, but properly rising. The parade would start in only a few hours: Pride, the few hours of the year that Gethin and Jonathan and everyone like them could occupy the streets and declare to the world who they were and how happily their stories could end. Gethin ran a finger gently over the spines of the books that he had so carefully curated for Gay's the Word, his beloved bookshop, established after a decade of planning and saving and dreaming, only a few streets away from where Forster and his friends had met and dared to immortalise their forbidden desires in narrative form. Now that his life was so thoroughly his own—his successful business, his wonderful community, and of course Jonathan—Gethin hadn't thought for years about his escape from Wales and his brief weeks of staying with Mr Fell. Did that little bookshop still exist, where a younger and more fearful Gethin had learned courage from the pages of novels? Would Mr Fell and his odd friend Crowley be proud to know that they had inspired Gethin to help guide others in need directly to the books that had once lent him hope?

Gethin liked to believe that they would.

Cheered, Gethin quietly padded back up the stairs to the flat and set his empty tea cup down on the kitchen counter.

"Parade's starting soon, we should get ready," he called towards the bedroom, to no reply.

Gethin sighed indulgently and walked back to the bedroom, where Jonathan was adamantly rolled up in the duvet. Gethin checked his watch, then glanced back at Jonathan with a smile.

"You coming?" he asked. Jonathan merely rolled over.

Gethin shook his head and retreated to the kitchen, to put the kettle back on for when Jonathan did decide to wake up. Perhaps he'd remember to see if Mr Fell's bookshop still existed, once the day's festivities were done. But Pride took precedence, for the moment; Pride, and all of the associated revelries that captured the rainbows and laughter and love that made Gethin's hard-won life in London so blessed. Now was the time to focus on the present and the future, not on the past. Kind Mr Fell and his curious bookshop could wait a little longer. And as for Wales—well, Gethin was positive that that corner of the earth was and would remain no more relevant to his life in June 1984 than a distant memory.


End file.
